Dell Technologies World 2024: Bringing AI to the edge
Leaders could benefit from bringing AI to where data is created – but will need a strong strategy for how to do this and a firm use case in mind


As enterprise AI becomes more widely adopted, businesses are being forced to examine whether their architecture is up to the task. The feverish hype around AI in the public cloud that started in November 2022 has given way to greater investment in open ecosystems for AI and smaller models run at a business’s edge.
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From chatbots stored on a laptop for offline use to AI handling data produced by sensors in smart manufacturing, there’s a huge range of ways to use AI at the edge. But where is customer demand when it comes to this new frontier for this technology, and how has their understanding of AI architecture changed since this time last year?
In this episode, recorded live at Dell Technologies World 2024, Rory speaks to Dermot O’Connell, senior vice president for EMEA services at Dell Technologies, to learn more about the changes in approach to enterprise AI and how businesses can prepare themselves for the technology’s adoption.
Highlights
“Running these applications at the edge and having containers in the edge means that you can run very modern applications, in a modular way right where the data, or sensors, or cameras are. You’re not shipping this back and forth, back and forth, back and forth all the time, which just introduced the latency and it wouldn't work in a real-time operating environment.”
“It is very, very, very early days. Like, the kind of projects when we're speaking to customers, they're starting on avatars, they're starting on chatbots, they're starting on coding engines. They are starting on what I would say is the fairly basic level of what you could potentially do with this technology.”
“So I would say those small chunks, could you create something very small without exposing data, that's everything. You can get into data governance conversations for years, easily. But there probably is some data that isn't really that important. I would say the easy one is, what's the entrance to this for your employees? And what's the entrance to this for your customers?”
Footnotes
- Dell Technologies World 2024 live: All the news and announcements from day-two
- "The big obstacle isn't anything technical": Dell CTO John Roese on why companies are failing on AI adoption
- Dell Technologies expands AI ecosystem with Microsoft, Hugging Face support
- Dell doubles down on Nvidia partnership with ‘AI factories’ and models at the edge
- What is 'multi-cloud by design'?
- Google shows off new smaller generative AI tools and an AI agent on your phone
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Rory Bathgate is Features and Multimedia Editor at ITPro, overseeing all in-depth content and case studies. He can also be found co-hosting the ITPro Podcast with Jane McCallion, swapping a keyboard for a microphone to discuss the latest learnings with thought leaders from across the tech sector.
In his free time, Rory enjoys photography, video editing, and good science fiction. After graduating from the University of Kent with a BA in English and American Literature, Rory undertook an MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at King’s College London. He joined ITPro in 2022 as a graduate, following four years in student journalism. You can contact Rory at rory.bathgate@futurenet.com or on LinkedIn.
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